Tuesday, 2 September 2014

Lad Smash

Jennifer Lawrence has had her iCloud hacked and pictures have been circulated online.

Three responses - 1. who cares, it’s a naked adult, lets all grow up a bit.

2. Oh MY GOD! Where are they?! Let me see!

3. What dickhead did that? I feel bad for Jennifer Lawrence.

These can be seen in varying degrees throughout the internet. One article on the 'scandal' is on The LAD Bible. I’m not even going to put a link. It’s basically FHM or Loaded etc without any writers or cerebral capacity. It’s pretty miserable.

Their article is a simple sharing of information. It doesn’t celebrate or condemn any element of the story but it’s closing statement is telling - [the photos]are still lurking in the dark corners of the internet. i.e. you can still find them if you try.

There was then a follow up story revealing the list of all the celebrities apparently hacked. All women, except for Dave Franco who appears in a picture with Allison Brie (I don’t even know who these people are but most of the names on the list are inarguably the names of women). Rihanna is on the list and the writer is curious to know what kind of ‘risky’ (sic) pic the hacker might have of Rihanna to warrant making money, when she’s usually just giving them away! It’s closing statement - a couple of pics of Kate Upton have been shared online and many are waiting for the rest i.e. we and our readership await more private photos stolen from unconsenting human beings.

Fuck off.

I hold my hands up, I have a problem with the concept of ‘lad’.

The term ‘lad’ is a smear of nineties residue that still clings to the twenty-first century’s window like an old streak of bird shit. Lads are exclusively men, I’m pretty sure the term laddette had the good grace to bow out in the naughties. Lads are dicks, or at least clinging to their god given right as men to behave like dicks. ‘Lad’ refers to almost every repellant masculine trope that is gradually becoming less acceptable as feminism and equality become more and more a part of mainstream consciousness. It doesn’t simply relate to women, it relates to any 'other', be it gay, foreign, female, dressed different, speaking different, thinking different etc. The ‘Lads’ are a tribe of males that gang together in order to retain and reinforce an archaic status quo that excludes anyone that isn’t them. Bullies basically. Not everyone that relates to said tribe is a dick all the time, but the term is a go-to phrase to excuse, justify or neutralise shitty behaviour, like looking at private photos because some moral black hole put them on the internet #lad

Everyone was curious. These celebrities are a weirdly large part of our lives (or at least Jennifer Lawrence is) and curiosity is instinctive. But a part of being a human being is clocking when your curiosities, instincts, urges etc, are inappropriate or mean or being a dick. The tribe of Lad exists in order to allow those shitty instincts to flourish for a select few in a widely accepted, albeit stagnant, form. I’m sure lots of people reading will already know this, I already knew it, but it’s nice to have it made crystal clear by The LAD Bible.

Cheers lads.

As a closing thought, because most news outlets have to retain a level of impartiality, we never get judgements on the people who ‘leak’ these photos and videos. Even the word ‘leak’ removes their agency. They don’t ‘leak’ this material, they hurl it into the internet, with intent and malice. Why are they not judged? Because the ownership laws are too complex and the internet’s a minefield? Not good enough. Whoever hacked Jennifer Lawrence, and whoever uploaded Tulisa’s tape, and Paris Hilton’s tape, and anyone who ever hurled a ‘compromising’ image of person without their consent onto the internet or anywhere, is a dog’s mashed-up lipstick boner and should have to eat drug-shit and cotton wool for every meal for the rest of their rubbish lives.

They suck.

And because this is a sentence not beyond my imagination - ‘Fazer uploaded a BJ tape he made with Tulisa, got away with it and made 10 G’s selling the story to red top journos… LAD’,